“Claire!” she yelled over the sirens. “The Pentagon servers — Harrison’s loyalists are initiating a scorched-earth wipe. They know you have the data. They’re trying to erase every financial record tied to the Vance name, and they’re routing the attack to look like it’s coming from your IP address!”

I watched the loading bar. They were trying to frame me for a cyber-terror attack on the U.S. government while destroying the evidence of their own treason.

I had maybe three minutes before they breached my final firewall.

The old Claire — the woman who’d spent five years tiptoeing around antique vases and bruised egos — would have panicked, called a lawyer, begged for a negotiation.

But the woman in the pulsing crimson glare was Arthur Harper’s daughter, and the blood in my ears sounded like a war drum.

“Let them come,” I said, flat.